Seagate and Phison Partner to Develop New Enterprise SSDs

[btarunr]

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, and Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, announced today plans to expand their SSD portfolio of next-gen high-performance, high-density enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new SSDs will help enterprises lower total cost ownership (TCO) through increased storage density, lower power consumption, and higher performance. The companies also announced that they have entered a long-term partnership that will strengthen the development cycle and distribution of enterprise-class SSDs.

Seagate and Phison have collaborated on Seagate's mainstream SATA SSD products since 2017. That close cooperation has continued through the company's performance-leading line of FireCuda consumer gaming NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSDs and the world's first purpose-built NAS NVMe SSDs. The partnership will now focus on meeting the evolving global enterprise demand for higher density, faster, and smarter storage infrastructure needs that complement HDD storage to enable comprehensive enterprise applications such as hyperscale data center, high-performance computing and AI.



"We integrated Seagate's 40-plus years of market-leading enterprise storage expertise with Phison's nimble ability to create highly customized SSDs to meet the ever-evolving needs of the enterprise storage market," said Jeff Fochtman, senior vice president of business and marketing at Seagate Technology. "Seagate is extremely excited to work with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology. Our selective focus allows us to serve the broad performance-driven enterprise SSD market while continuing our leadership in the specialized premium gaming SSD segment."

"Phison is proud to partner with Seagate to expand our enterprise SSD product line," said Sebastien Jean, CTO of Phison Electronics. "Our leading in-house ASIC technology, coupled with engineering excellence, complements Seagate's deep industry knowledge. In a show of commitment to this partnership, in 2020 we opened a development center in Broomfield, Colorado. Together, we will deliver winning solutions for a wide range of applications including Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Storage, and 5G edge computing."

Seagate and Phison will work together to strengthen the industry's enterprise-class SSD product offerings focusing on best-in-class performance, cost savings, and efficiency. Optimized for specific workloads, environments, and use cases, each new product will be engineered and customized to specifically address a customer's technical needs.

Detailed product announcements from this partnership will be shared in the summer of 2022.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[defaultluser]

When you are "just another controller + flash OEM," you're only competitive with the likes of Kingston

Every year Seagate declines to get involved in the NVRAM hardware business is another one where they get FURTHER left-behind!

I mean, in 2020, WD was already selling 4x the flash drives that Seagate was - one can only imagine how large that differential will be in 2030, if they continue this trend uncorrected?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

When you are "just another controller + flash OEM," you're only competitive with the likes of Kingston

Every year Seagate declines to get involved in the NVRAM hardware business is another one where they get FURTHER left-behind!

I mean, in 2020, WD was already selling 4x the flash drives that Seagate was - one can only imagine how large that differential will be in 2030, if they continue this trend uncorrected?

Seagate's primary market is enterprise datacenters and those are still overwhelmingly dominated by mechanical spinning disks. Flash is used largely for caching in those environments. Fl;ash has a long way to go till they can match spinning disks in regard too density and capacity. Flash will probably never be the medium of storage for these environments. Something else may have to come along to get datacenters to leave spinning disks in favor.

Every year Seagate declines to get involved in the NVRAM hardware business is another one where they get FURTHER left-behind!

Seagate hasn't really declined to be involved per say, but Flash controllers are a lot more complicated than disks drive controllers. (Assuming that is what you mean by declining to be involved in NVRAM hardware)
WD bought Sandisk so that is where all their Flash drives tech and volume comes from. The resources were there from Sandisk to make controllers and flash

 

[defaultluser]

Seagate's primary market is enterprise datacenters and those are still overwhelmingly dominated by mechanical spinning disks. Flash is used largely for caching in those environments. Fl;ash has a long way to go till they can match spinning disks in regard too density and capacity. Flash will probably never be the medium of storage for these environments. Something else may have to come along to get datacenters to leave spinning disks in favor.



Seagate hasn't really declined to be involved per say, but Flash controllers are a lot more complicated than disks drive controllers. (Assuming that is what you mean by declining to be involved in NVRAM hardware)
WD bought Sandisk so that is where all their Flash drives tech and volume comes from. The resources were there from Sandisk to make controllers and flash

If you want to continue to deny the transition is already happening, feel free.

The only part of enterprise systems shipping with hard drives these days are SANs (compute and servers are almost exclusively SSD)

The longer it takes Seagate to buy-in completely, the longer big players like Samsung and WD will continue handing them their lunch in Enterprise SSDs; if you want to see how much this all costs, to catcup when you're a decade behind just look at Intel's Crash Course in Brain Surgery:

Intel and Micron Plan Flash-Memory Venture (Published 2005)

The Intel Corporation, the leading semiconductor maker, and Micron Technology announced Monday a joint venture to manufacture NAND flash-memory chips in an effort to tap into one of the chip industry's fastest- growing segments. The rising demand for NAND flash memory is being driven by the...

www.nytimes.com

Still took then 5 years to get competitive (at enormous cost); or, they can wait and buy some other flash maker at way higher prices than WD paid for Sandisk!

 

[MxPhenom 216]

If you want to continue to deny the transition is already happening, feel free.

The only part of enterprise systems shipping with hard drives these days are SANs (compute and servers are almost exclusively SSD)

The longer it takes Seagate to buy-in completely, the longer big players like Samsung and WD will continue handing them their lunch in Enterprise SSDs; if you want to see how much this all costs, to catcup when you're a decade behind just look at Intel's Crash Course in Brain Surgery:

Intel and Micron Plan Flash-Memory Venture (Published 2005)

The Intel Corporation, the leading semiconductor maker, and Micron Technology announced Monday a joint venture to manufacture NAND flash-memory chips in an effort to tap into one of the chip industry's fastest- growing segments. The rising demand for NAND flash memory is being driven by the...

www.nytimes.com

Still took then 5 years to get competitive (at enormous cost); or, they can wait and buy some other flash maker at way higher prices than WD paid for Sandisk!

Not even remotely true. I used to work at Microsoft and managed a majority of the datacenters and labs. 90% of the storage were spinning disks. Nothing really has changed much since. If the transition were really happening we would be seeing a decline in spinning disk shipments, when its actually been the opposite.

I literally work in this industry. I think I would know a thing or 2 about where things are and where its going.

 

[kapone32]

Seagate's primary market is enterprise datacenters and those are still overwhelmingly dominated by mechanical spinning disks. Flash is used largely for caching in those environments. Fl;ash has a long way to go till they can match spinning disks in regard too density and capacity. Flash will probably never be the medium of storage for these environments. Something else may have to come along to get datacenters to leave spinning disks in favor.



Seagate hasn't really declined to be involved per say, but Flash controllers are a lot more complicated than disks drive controllers. (Assuming that is what you mean by declining to be involved in NVRAM hardware)
WD bought Sandisk so that is where all their Flash drives tech and volume comes from. The resources were there from Sandisk to make controllers and flash

It is interesting to me that the Seagate 530 is the fastest NVME drive I have ever used.

 

[defaultluser]

It is interesting to me that the Seagate 530 is the fastest NVME drive I have ever used.

Sure, and because they don't control any part of it, you get a $40 markup over the equivalent WD Black.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate-firecuda-530-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5/6474702.p?skuId=6474702

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-wd_black-sn850-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5-and-desktops/6474398.p?skuId=6474398&ref=212&loc=1&extStoreId=290&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7qSBhD-ARIsACvV1X1s7PuvPyJ8vdIL_7Aeb83zX98O6YChkdW7X8rOfEY6hqOp0UkMWJoaAoeWEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

That means most businesses are mor likely to choose WD for any price critical purchase / large order with an OEM.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Sure, and because they don't control any part of it, you get a $40 markup over the equivalent WD Black.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate-firecuda-530-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5/6474702.p?skuId=6474702

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-wd_black-sn850-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5-and-desktops/6474398.p?skuId=6474398&ref=212&loc=1&extStoreId=290&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7qSBhD-ARIsACvV1X1s7PuvPyJ8vdIL_7Aeb83zX98O6YChkdW7X8rOfEY6hqOp0UkMWJoaAoeWEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

That means most businesses are mor likely to choose WD for any price critical purchase / large order with an OEM.

That $40 mark up is more from the EK heatsink than anything else pertaining to the drive.

 

[kapone32]

Sure, and because they don't control any part of it, you get a $40 markup over the equivalent WD Black.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/seagate-firecuda-530-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5/6474702.p?skuId=6474702

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-wd_black-sn850-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-with-heatsink-for-ps5-and-desktops/6474398.p?skuId=6474398&ref=212&loc=1&extStoreId=290&ref=212&loc=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwl7qSBhD-ARIsACvV1X1s7PuvPyJ8vdIL_7Aeb83zX98O6YChkdW7X8rOfEY6hqOp0UkMWJoaAoeWEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

That means most businesses are mor likely to choose WD for any price critical purchase / large order with an OEM.

You are using the one with the heatsink which can be $90 more than the one without.

https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/seagate-firecuda-530-1tb-nvme-pci-e-internal-hard-drive-zp1000gm3a013/15644366

https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/product/seagate-firecuda-530-heatsink-1tb-nvme-pci-e-internal-solid-state-drive-zp1000gm3a023/15644370

WD seems to be on sale right now too. I do have the AN1500 and love it but Seagate has some special

 

[chrcoluk]

Even google use mostly spindles, I know some have a all nand environment but in the big wide world $$$ is still king.

But of course nand presence is slowly growing, it holds the cards in physical space, power consumption and heat but loses in $ capacity cost. The large vendors of whom I know off in terms of configuration will typically use nand for caching purposes but still backed by spindles.